mozz14

The media (owned by rich people) are currently going "WOW? SO CONFUSING! BAD LABOR BUDGET BAD! MASSIVE TAX HIKES!" but what actually is happening?

Negative gearing ISN'T being abolished. Literally everyone who already benefited from it on their investment portfolios continues to have it. Anyone complaining and saying they're going to raise the rent because it's made things less profitable for them is lying and a scumbag.

The change is going forward any ADDITIONAL properties an investor wants to get tax breaks on can only be applied to NEW builds, thus encouraging investors to build new properties (instead of buying all the currently existing ones and driving prices up). So who is negatively impacted by this? Literally no one. Who does this benefit? Anyone who wants to live in a house because it increases housing supply and makes the housing market less competitive for investors vs home owners.

Really simple.

What about capital gains tax discount? Basically, in the 90s John Howard made it so that when you sold a house you'd get a 50% discount where half of the profit wasn't taxed. Investors went woohoo! Bought up all the affordable houses to drive prices up and make a big profit. It fueled the housing crisis for the past 30 years. But Labor went "actually, what if we just tax it at 30% instead with no discount?" So instead of half of the money being tax free, it's all taxed. You know... like how making money normally works???

30% is still actually lower than the top two income tax brackets so rich people will still manage to make lots of money without having to work BUT... they'll just have to pay a little tax. BUT only on profit. If a property makes a loss it's not taxed. The amount of tax is also adjusted down relative to inflation so a $100,000 profit isn't taxed $30,000 but actually less depending on how much inflation happened during the time the asset was held.

Also capital gains tax doesn't apply to the home you live in so unless you're a property investor YOU'RE NOT GETTING TAXED! THE VAST MAJORITY OF AUSTRALIANS ARE NOT BEING AFFECTED HERE AND YET WE'RE SEEING WIDE PUBLIC OUTRAGE OVER A TAX DESIGNED TO MAKE THE HOUSING MARKET LESS COMPETITIVE AND THUS EASIER FOR HOME OWNERS TO ENTER IT.

This budget literally mostly just slightly inconveniences the 1% of investors who own a WHOPPING 25% OF INVESTMENT PROPERTIES IN AUSTRALIA.

The capital gains tax discount was never for working Australians! It was never for you! It was always just a tax perk for investors to encourage them to buy up houses away from those who needed them and hike up rents. Labor fixed that.

No wonder the rich media moguls and politicians who make most of their money off property investments like Pauline Hanson and Angus Taylor are mad about it and want YOU to be mad too. They don't want to pay taxes! Booo! The problem is: if we can't get the uber-wealthy to pay a little bit of tax then YOU will NEVER own a home!

So the changes are really simple. They're mild. And yet the right is outraged over how it even slightly benefits working and ordinary Australians.

Chapter 11 - Christmas at the Eyrie, the Griffin family estate, can't end quickly enough for Clarke. She misses her privacy, she misses her friends. In particular, she's missing Lexa.

Read here on AO3

@mozz14

So, what do you do for fun down in Cargo Bay 2? Fun? You know, relaxation, entertainment during your off hours?

90's Lesbians: Bitch, I don't know about you, but my Mother does NOT fucking look at me like THAT:

Here’s the link if this is also to your appetites:

Lexa Woods is a smart, calculating woman who has made a name for herself in the tech world after inventing a way to track hackers and starting her own cybersecurity firm. Ironically, she is also known as Heda in the illicit trade market as a notorious thief and vigilante, focusing on stealing technology and intel that can topple corrupt governments, overthrow horrible leaders, influence politics, and save the lives of people she feels deserves it.

Clarke is a sarcastic and witty artist that has also made a name for herself as the head curator at a well-known, prestigious art museum, traveling the world to acquire rare pieces to display to the public. She is also a well-known vigilante counterfeiter on the bootlegging market, duplicating expensive, rare art that has been looted or plundered, and swapping it out for the original to be returned to its rightful owner.

Lexa and Clarke have been happily married for a couple years, none the wiser to their wife’s second job, until Lexa accepts an odd heist at Clarke’s museum that goes terribly wrong. Now, both of their lives are in danger and secrets are forced to come to light as they work together to figure out why a painting is worth killing for.

(It’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith WIP with a twist! Hoping to start posting sometime this summer.)

I could see Kathryn Janeway returning to the Alpha Quadrant in the wake of the Dominion War and a lot of her fellow captains thinking she had it easy by “getting her ship lost”. And then the ship’s logs start hitting general access after the debriefings are over. (The same way Janeway was able to pull other captain’s logs for reference).

And her fellow rank-and-file get the logs dealing with the Borg, the Hirogen, Species 8472, the Vidiians, the telepathic pitcher plant, the macrovirus, what have you. And combining all that with making the journey in seven years and the fact that the entire Voyager crew is now a highly trained influx of fresh staffing after the Dominion War, with seven years of Janeway’s desperate insistence on Starfleet morals informing them?

Suddenly Janeway’s crew is captains and commanders and lieutenants, and she’s this Teddy Roosevelt-esque figure in Starfleet in that she’s revered for her leadership but also considered the type of admirably insane that wins wars.

And right about this time Janeway is looking at how Starfleet principles - the very same principles she clung to for her own sanity for seven years - have distorted and changed to be more war-like after the Dominion took so many lives, and she’s thinking “???? have you all??? gone mad???? you know what, yeah, put me in charge.”

Ch. 10 - The Yule Ball has finally arrived.

@mozz14

Read here on AO3

Ch 9 - Clarke and Lexa get some time alone together, and finally get to know one another.

Read here on A03